Success, Failure, and (Nearly) Endless Possibilities

Yogurt success! And it was really very easy and quick. Instead of using a yogurt maker, I tried the suggestion of putting the warm mixture in a cooler but that didn’t work. After 3 hours, it was still liquid and not warm anymore. So I poured it into glass jars, put them in a hot water bath, and stuck it in the oven that had been preheated to its lowest temperature and immediately turned off. The next morning, I had 4 cups of yogurt. During this process, I read the ingredients on the Greek yogurt that Tim had in the fridge that I used for my starter culture and it didn’t have all those nasty artificial ingredients in it so my yogurt making was not truly necessary. I just need to avoid the diet kinds of yogurt and go for the real stuff. But, using 1 quart of organic milk to make 4 cups of yogurt only cost me about $2.19 plus a little for the ½ cup of starter so I figure homemade costs me about half the price of the store bought yogurt for about twice as much finished product. Saving money is good!

Bee failures. After picking veggies from the garden Saturday morning, Tim checked on his bees and discovered a catastrophe. Two of his hives have been wiped out by wax moths and hive beetles. He still has one healthy hive that he will try to split next spring but he’s pretty down. He’s been keeping bees for about 5 years now and every couple of years, just when it seems like things are going well, he loses bees.

With the discovery of the bee problems, we didn’t have time to make it to the farmers’ market this weekend. But last night, I checked out www.ncfarmfresh.com. It looks like we’ll have no problem getting our meats locally, farm direct. Free-range chicken, grass fed and finished beef, and pasture-raised pork are all available either in our county or one of the adjacent counties. When the freezer runs low, we know where to go.